Sunday, 31 July 2016

Stephen Cohen on Donald Trump

Russia
Expert Stephen Cohen: Trump Wants To Stop The New Cold War, But The
American Media Just Doesn't Understand

Cohen
says the media at large is doing a huge disservice to the American
people by ignoring the substance of Trump's arguments about NATO and
Russia, and buying the Clinton campaign's simplistic smear that Trump
is a Russian "Manchurian candidate."

"That
reckless branding of Trump as a Russian agent, most of it is coming
from the Clinton campaign," Cohen said. "And they really
need to stop."

"We're
approaching a Cuban Missile Crisis level nuclear confrontation with
Russia," he explained. "And there is absolutely no
discussion, no debate, about this in the American media."

"Then
along comes, unexpectedly, Donald Trump," he continued, "Who
says he wants to end the New Cold War, and cooperate with Russia in
various places... and --astonishingly-- the media is full of what
only can be called neo-McCarthyite charges that he is a Russian
agent, that he is a Manchurian candidate, and that he is Putin's
client."

"This
is a moment when there should be, in a presidential year, a debate,"
he said. "And that is not what we are given in the media today."

"Let's
go back to what you said Trump said about NATO," Cohen also
said. "Trump said early on, he wanted to know, 60 years after
its foundation, what was NATO's mission today. 100 policy wonks in
Washington since the end of the Soviet Union, 25 years ago, have
asked the same question. Is NATO an organization in search of a
mission?"